Greyhats had up for AT&T iPad celebrity backdoor slurp breach

The "theft" of email address and personal information of early adopters of Apple's iPad tablet last June is about to become the subject of a criminal prosecution.

The personal details, including phone numbers, of around 114,000 iPad 3G users were obtained from insecure servers maintained by AT&T. Those exposed included celebrities and senior government officials, including New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

Grey-hat hacker group Goatse Security claimed credit for the stunt, which exploited web application security flaws in AT&T's website. One Andrew Auernheimer, 24 (aka Weev), was arrested over the breach days later.

The incident sparked an FBI investigation which is due to result in criminal charges, Reuters reports. The FBI and DoJ will hold a press conference announcing the charges later on Tuesday. ®